While increasingly more successful in their roles as store and forward data systems, computer networks such as the Internet are experiencing tremendous growth as transaction-based, mission critical business applications, Web site owners, and business servers are overwhelmed by explosive traffic growth.
XML, or eXtensible Markup Language v. 1.0 was adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on Feb. 10, 1998. XML provides a structured syntax for data exchange. XML is a markup language, like Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Most markup languages, like HTML, are fixed markup languages. That is, the fixed markup languages, such as HTML, include a set of fixed tags for crafting a document. On the other hand, XML does not define a fixed set of tags, but rather, only defines a syntax or structured format through which users can define their own set of XML tags. There presently are a number of XML based languages which define their own set of tags using the XML syntax. XML has the further advantage because the actual data is separated from the presentation of the data, in contrast with HTML which combines these two items. As a result, XML has the potential to become a standard by which most computers, servers and applications will exchange or communicate data.
As a result, there is a need to provide network apparatus that are scalable to accommodate such explosive growth in Internet traffic. It is also desirable to allow such network apparatus to process or manipulate information in a variety of formats, such as XML.